


Field Mice

by MathConcepts



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Gen, Implied Gale x Johanna, Light Angst, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Canon Fix-It, Unrequited Love, everthorne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:07:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25055179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MathConcepts/pseuds/MathConcepts
Summary: He comes back one spring day, unexpectedly, melting soundlessly out of the trees like I remember, he has wild a turkey in hand, and a bow and a quiver of arrows over his shoulder."Catnip." he greets. He's not smiling, not quite, but his eyes are warm. Warm and nervous."Gale." I croak.Gale comes home, years and years later, and everything falls into place quite naturally.
Relationships: Katniss Everdeen/Gale Hawthorne
Comments: 3
Kudos: 28





	Field Mice

He comes back one spring day, unexpectedly, melting soundlessly out of the trees like I remember, he has a wild turkey in hand, and a bow and a quiver of arrows over his shoulder.   
  
"Catnip." he greets. He's not smiling, not quite, but his eyes are warm. Warm and nervous.   
  
"Gale." I croak.   
  
It's been years, years and years. I was pardoned by Paylor one or two years ago, sooner than anyone expected, but I've never left Twelve. My mother finally visited once, bringing her own type of sadness with her. It was a relief when she left, I was glad to see her, but I just couldn't bear her, quiet and already so out of place in Twelve. Then Annie, who came years back, with her and Finnick's then four-year-old son. It was jarring to see the child, a tiny copy of his father with his mother's hair. Even Effie visits after my pardon, bringing clothes and gossip, and a thousand invitations to a thousand events I'll never attend.   
  


Surprisingly, she spends most of her time in Twelve with Haymitch. I suppose they'd learned to understand each other, I don't. I get occasional calls from Plutarch, and at one time, a call from Johanna. But I can never stomach visiting any of them, even though I can now. I stay to myself, just me and Buttercup, who comes and goes, and one time snuck into Haymitch's house and bit a chunk out of his face while he was sleeping.  
  
Peeta is here with me too, every morning I go out to water his primrose bushes and wave goodbye to him as he heads off to work at his bakery in town. The bakery isn't where his family's was, he had it built far away, but he's the best baker in Twelve. I always come by for a cheese bun after hunting, and on weekends we get together to see Peeta's latest art exhibition in the Justice building, or to watch the news. We've seen the memorial wall being built in the Capitol, that has the thousands and thousands of names of the the people that died in the rebellion engraved on it, we've seen the assassination attempt on Paylor live, and the execution of the Capitol sympathizers afterwards, and we've watched the ceremony that had posthumously awarded medals to Prim and other fallen soldiers for their efforts in the war. My mother sent me her medal, and I keep it in my dresser, along with my Mockingjay pin that Plutarch had returned to me.

  
  
 _"They wanted to put it in a war memorial,"_ Plutarch had said in the letter he'd sent with it, _"But I had a copy made instead, they won't know the difference."  
  
_ I wear it sometimes, to remember, or maybe so I don't forget. I'm wearing it now, pinned to my shirt under my thin jacket.   
  


"Catnip." Gale repeats again. He's the only one that has never called, or written or visited. I'm glad he never did, I couldn't have faced him, not back then. It's different now though, the years are slipping by, and my hunting days seem longer and longer. I'm alone here in Twelve, Haymitch doesn't bother himself with much besides feeding the geese and calculating the train schedule, and there's a gap between Peeta and me that doesn't seem to want to be breached. We're friends, nothing can change that, when I can't sleep he always comes over with a bit of bread or dried tea, and when he calls me in the night after waking up screaming from a nightmare, I'm there to talk to him.   
  
He wants more, I can tell it in the way he looks at me sometimes, in the sadness he tries to hide when I gently brush off his invitations to come help at his bakery, in the small, tender little touches he gives my hand or arm when I need comforting. I'm not irritated by it, I'm beyond glad he's here, I'm beyond glad he's willingly to still put up with me.   
  


But I'm not guilty over him anymore. I've finally accomplished what I had set out to do in the Games, to save Peeta. He's here, healthy and happy, and dare I say, _safe_. There's nothing more I can give him anymore. Sometimes, I wonder what it would be like to kiss him again, but the thought always fades quickly.  
  
I may be a little lonely, but life is pleasant now. I've ignored the feeling that something is missing up until now, but when Gale steps out of the trees, it finally comes crashing down full force. I crouch there, frozen by my feelings, and take him in. He's older now, but so am I. A little thicker, a little more bearded, a little more finely dressed, but it's him.   
  


He holds up the turkey. "Dinner?" he asks. We trek up to the lake in silence, we have a turkey and three squirrels between us, and Gale has brought a few loaves of bread with him. I don't have to ask to know they're from Peeta's bakery. He plucks the turkey, and I start the fire, and while we wait for the bird to roast, we make awkward small talk.   
  
"District 2 wasn't home. I tried to make it work, but I had to come back." he says. I should say something, _maybe I'm glad your here,_ or _it's good you're home,_ but nothing comes out. I'm still trying to process seeing him, still trying to figure out how to work around the one huge spot on our ledger. But this is Gale, and he never makes things easy for me.  
  
"Katniss, about Prim..." he begins. I shake my head, because it's not something that I want to hear, but he continues. "I didn't know, I swear, Katniss. I made those bombs, I approved their use, but they were only ever meant to kill Capitol soldiers...never...never Prim."   
  
It's on the tip of my tongue to ask him how he could not have known, but I'm not a child anymore. It was so easy to blame him for what happened to Prim, but time has taught me that things are not that easy. It was war, and he was fighting it, sometimes in a ruthless way. But then, was I ever any better?   
  
Snow hardly ever intrudes on my thoughts anymore, but he pops up now. I never forgot our talk in the rose garden, the one that convinced me to kill Coin. Coin had put Prim there, sent her out into certain danger. She must have known where the bombs would fall. So who really killed my sister? We were all victims, me, Prim and Gale. Of the Capitol, of Snow, of Coin. I've known all this for years, but it has taken time, time to think, and time to dull the pain of Prim's loss to finally reason and forgive.   
  
"It doesn't matter now." I say haltingly to him, taking a deep breath as I feel my throat stick. "...I know, I know you would have never hurt her." It's as far as I can get to explaining my complex thoughts on the matter, but Gale understands, like he always has. And then I'm crying, but he just wraps an arm around me, and we sit side by side as I sniffle away, letting the turkey burn.  
  


It's easier to talk after that, easier to stand each other's presence. He has a house in the Seam, I learn as we're walking back with the burnt turkey and squirrel bones wrapped up for Buttercup. They gave him a mining job easily, but one as a foreman in respect to his station as a veteran of the rebellion. "I intend to make the mines safer." he promises, looking at me knowingly, and I see us as children, standing in the Justice building side-by-side to receive the medals for our dead fathers. There's still been mining accidents and deaths despite the high-tech equipment and advice Twelve is sent by the Capitol, but if anyone can design something better, it's Gale.   
  
  


He sees me to the edge of Victor's Village, and tells me to keep the last of the bread. Then he's off, disappearing into the twilight. The next morning I'm half convinced that he had been a dream, until I go out into town to buy some things, and pass him heading to the mines with a group of other workers.   
  
  
Slowly it begins to fall into place after that. He starts joining me to hunt, first just for a turkey here and a squirrel there, enough for a dinner or for a day or so. It becomes more as the days go on, as we relearn each other after so many years apart, and lose ourselves in the hunt, and soon I'm hauling my kills into the market. By and by the butcher contracts me to bring her fresh venison, and by the time summer rolls around I have a steady job. It's nice, in a way, familiar. It's the one thing I know how to do right, feed people. The past years I've only hunted to keep myself busy, to fill the empty days between one weekend and the next.   
  
Gale works hard at his own job, I find out he's in constant contact with Beetee, who has promised to have some machines he has designed built and shipped over to Twelve. Beetee offers to build me another bow, the first one he designed for me is now on display in the Capitol. I refuse, I'm content with the simple ones I have now. I do ask that he sends me some of Cinna's sketches though, and I carefully paste them into the book me, Peeta and Haymitch have created. It was project to keep us all sane, a journal of sorts. The book has my writing, Peeta's inked drawings, a picture of Annie and Finnick's son, anecdotes about Cinna, memories of the Games, and more, much more.   
  
I tell Gale about the book, but he turns down my offer to add anything to it. It isn't his place, he says. He does offer me a few needles of dried pine to scatter in the pages of the book, "For Johanna," he says, and I don't ask questions. Sometimes it's better not to, I've come to understand. And in any case, I'm past jealousy.   
  
If he still has any feelings for me, he doesn't mention them, and for a while it feels almost as if I were sixteen again, hunting with my best friend before everything fell to pieces.  
  
  
  
  
Of course, it doesn't fail to escape Peeta's notice that I'm spending much more time with Gale. Peeta was quiet about Gale's return, only briefly mentioning that Gale had bought bread from him when we meet up to watch the news. But he's uneasy, I can tell. I can't understand why. I thought we'd absolved each other of all obligations to each other long ago. I love Peeta, I do. But he was always shelter in the storm. Seeing Gale after so long was like coming home.   
  


Gale allows me to grasp at the familiar in a sea of the unfamiliar, and when I wake up one morning, it dawns on me that we are living in the world Gale had wanted, ever since we were children scrapping the woods and decrying the Capitol in secret, a place without the Capitol, or the Games, or the threat of starvation. We did it, him and I, we saw the rebellion through, the rebellion we talked about when he was lying on the kitchen table that one horrible winter day. _"I am his, and he is mine,"_ I had thought that day. _"Anything else is unthinkable."_  
  
I try to let him know that I still believe that one day, when I impulsively press a kiss just shy of his jaw and tell him I'm glad he's here. I don't mind if he reciprocates, perhaps I want him to.  
  


So when I cut my hand while hunting one day, and he takes it and kisses the sting away, I let him. When he kisses my cheek after I've expressed admiration for one of the mining machines of his Beetee has sent over, I let him. And when he finally kisses me in the woods at the turn of fall, I kiss back.   
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
  
Officially, I never marry. Unofficially, me and Gale toast a bit of bread in front of the fireplace in my house. It seems the logical step, and I have no one to be afraid of besides myself. Haymitch doesn't say much when Gale moves into my house in Victor's Village, but I don't see much, if anything of Peeta for nearly half a year. Haymitch assures me he'll be alright, and I come around to the bakery sometimes to leave a bouquet of fresh primroses for his cakes, although he never so much as looks at me. Greasy Sae brings me his cheese buns, and manages to comfort me when I worry over him.   
  


I hunt, and Gale mines, and the years go by. Anne visits again with her son, astonishing me with how big he's grown. When she leaves is when Gale brings up children for the first time. But I don't want children, I never have, even now in this utopia of ours.   
  
Peeta, when he'd emerged from seclusion, had been quietly insistent on knowing if we were having children. But me and Gale never talked about it, and Peeta's questions mostly went unanswered. 

But I don't want kids, and I make that clear.  
  


But the next year, Gale makes a proposal to me, and I agree.   
  
He's a small boy of eleven, but his size makes him looks eight. She's eleven too, his twin and as small as him, but thankfully not because of hunger. They're both olive-skinned and grey eyed, and Gale calls them his little _field mice_.   
  
Two children seemed an overwhelming number to me, but my house in Victor's Village is big enough for us four, and my stipend from the Capitol is much more than enough to cover all our expenses. The caretaker at the orphanage assured me the children are well-behaved, but it wouldn't matter much if they weren't. They're sweet and eager to learn, Gale teaches them to shoot, and I teach them to swim, and when their birthday rolls around, Peeta brings over an iced cake for them. Haymitch manages to win their hearts in between bouts of drinking, and they help him care for his geese.  
  
  
When spring rolls around again I take them out to pick berries in the woods, and I sing to them about daises and meadows and safety. I'm grateful for them in more ways than I can say. When the days come when it hurts, when everything seems too much and nothing at all, I can bypass the list I've made for moments like these, and just look at them. They could be a much younger me and Gale, but these children won't grow up with the Games, or the Capitol, or hunger.   
  
At the very least, it's enough. After all, there can be so much, much worse.   
  
  
  



End file.
